Hans and Frieda, two members with dwarfism of a freakshow, are engaged to marry each other. However, Hans has fallen in love with the beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra. At first, she only makes fun of him. But when she finds out that he has become a rich man, as he has inherited money, she wants to marry him for the money. But she and her lover, the muscleman Hercules, have not taken into account the other “freaks” of the circus…
Freaks is a mixture of many genres – from drama to comedy and horror. After his great success with Dracula 1931, Tod Browning was asked to make an even more terrifying horror film. Although the result is less of a horror film, but more so an empathetic view on how disabled people were treated at the beginning of the 20th century. The director asks the question of who the actual “monsters” really are in our society. The film was clearly ahead of its time. Because of the extreme reactions to the film, it had to be shortened to a more harmless version, but nevertheless taken out of the programs of many cinemas and forbidden in multiple countries.
Sophie Stirnemann
Übersetzung: Isabel Leder
